The armory hall of Hachinosu was no longer a room; it was a tomb of rising dust, blue alcohol-fire, and the localized gravitational screams of a collapsing fortress. The ceiling was groaning—a deep, metallic shriek that sounded like a dying beast, signaling that Chopper's supernatural strength was nearing its absolute, physiological limit. Sanjuan Wolf's mountain-sized hand, thick with the grime of the sea, was still jammed through the northern wall like a jagged cork in a bottle, sealing the only exit and plunging the hall into a flickering, terrifying gloom.
"Chopper's flickering! His Haki is bottoming out!" Nami yelled, her voice barely audible over the roar of the fire. Her eyes darted between the falling masonry and the looming silhouettes of the Titanic Captains.
Vasco Shot was stumbling back to his feet, giggling with a wet, raspy sound as he uncorked a fresh, massive jug of "Iron-Gut Ale." Van Augur was recalibrating his scope with the cold, mechanical precision of a clockmaker, and Catarina Devon—now shifting back into her nine-tailed fox form—was low to the ground, her tails twitching as she prepared for a final, lethal pounce that would take Nami's head.
"We need a path, and we need it SUUUUPER fast!" Franky shouted, his metallic jaw sparking as he took a heavy hit from a falling stone. He looked at Usopp, then at the massive, struggling form of Monster Point Chopper, whose fur was matted with sweat and debris.
A lightbulb—quite literally a high-wattage LED built into his frontal lobe—flash-pulsed behind Franky's eyes.
"Usopp! Chopper! It's time! We have no choice! The ultimate battlefield formation! The one that strikes fear into the hearts of gods and interior decorators alike!"
Usopp's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. He wiped the snot and soot from his nose with the back of his hand, a sudden, manic grin breaking across his face. He knew that look. It was the look of a man who had seen the pinnacle of engineering. "You mean... that? Here? Now?!"
"Yes," Franky struck a pose so rigid it caused his hydraulics to hiss. "TACTICAL HACHINOSU DOCKING!"
The Docking Dilemma
"Chopper! Right leg! Usopp! Left arm! Prepare for the ultimate fusion of flesh and SUUUUPER chrome!" Franky commanded, his voice booming with the authority of a shipyard foreman.
Chopper, even in his primal, heavy-breathing Monster state, seemed to recognize the command. It was etched into his very DNA from the days of Thriller Bark. He shifted his massive weight, preparing to let the ceiling drop just enough to lock his giant shoulder into Franky's lower chassis. Usopp began to scramble toward Franky's side with the agility of a desperate squirrel, his hands ready to latch onto a mechanical port located near Franky's "Nipple-Light" array.
They both turned in unison toward Nami, their faces filled with a terrifying, earnest hope.
"Nami! You're the head! You're the tactical brain! Dock on top of my shoulders and we shall become the Emperor of Hachinosu!" Franky yelled, his chest plates opening with a satisfying shink to reveal a mounting bracket lined with red velvet.
Nami stood frozen. Her Clima-Tact was held mid-swing, a stray bolt of static electricity dancing along its tip. She looked at the giant robot-man striking a ridiculous pose, the trembling sniper trying to climb a metallic leg, and the drooling, twelve-foot monster-reindeer waiting for a rider.
Behind her, David, the merchant, looked up from his sack of gold, his jaw hanging open. He looked at the Straw Hats, then at the terrifying Titanic Captains, then back at the "Docking" attempt. "Are they... are they going to become a giant person? Is this a forbidden Fish-man technique?"
Nami's face went flat. Her eyes turned into cold, dead, black dots—the universal sign that someone was about to die, and it wasn't going to be the enemy.
"As a human being," Nami said, her voice dripping with a terrifyingly calm, arctic venom, "that is the most embarrassing thing I have ever heard in my entire life. I refuse. I would rather be swallowed by this island, digested by the Shima Shima no Mi, and turned into a cobblestone. Don't ever ask me again. Ever."
"BUT NAMI-SWAN!" Usopp cried, his voice cracking with emotion. "IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO CONCENTRATE OUR POWER INTO A SINGLE POINT OF JUSTICE!"
"I will concentrate my lightning into your skull if you don't shut up and fight!" she roared, her aura briefly turning so dark and oppressive that it momentarily stunned Catarina Devon.
The Super Weather-Plant Combo: "Greens of the Thunder God"
"Fine, fine! No docking! The world remains un-refined!" Franky grunted, visibly disappointed. "Plan B! The 'Not-As-Cool-But-More-Practical-And-Less-Lawsuit-Prone' Combo!"
Franky planted his feet, his heavy metallic legs transforming into a wide, stabilized tripod that gripped the shifting floor. "General Cannon: Locked and Loaded! Usopp, get in position! We're going for a 'Full-Bore' output!"
Usopp jumped onto Franky's shoulder—not as a limb, but as a secondary battery. He braced himself against Franky's neck, pulling out a massive, glowing seed that pulsed with a deep, emerald light. "Green Star: Sargasso of the Deep! This thing grows on seawater and sheer spite!"
"Nami! We need the moisture! Give us the juice to make this thing bloom in hell!" Usopp yelled.
Nami sighed, her professional instincts overriding her sheer embarrassment. Her hands moved with a blur of speed. She threw three Weather Eggs into the air directly in front of Franky's massive cannon muzzle. "Weather Egg: Cyclone Tempo!"
The eggs hatched mid-air, creating a high-pressure, swirling wind tunnel. The vacuum effect was so strong it began sucking in the flammable alcohol fumes from Vasco Shot's spilled jugs and the thick, magical fog from Devon's illusions, concentrating all the battlefield's elements into a single, volatile tube of air.
"Now, Usopp! Launch the seed into the eye of the storm!" Franky roared.
Usopp fired the Sargasso seed with the precision of a master sniper. As the seed hit the high-pressure, alcohol-rich wind tunnel, it didn't just grow; it mutated. The seaweed vines, fed by the humidity Nami provided and the volatile spirits of Vasco Shot, surged forward. Hundreds of them twisted and braided themselves in a microsecond, forming a massive, rotating green drill that filled the entire hallway from floor to ceiling.
"RADICAL BEAM: INFUSION!"
Franky fired his signature laser directly into the rear of the spinning seaweed drill. The beam didn't just pass through; the seaweed acted as a bio-organic fiber-optic cable, absorbing the heat and light until the entire green mass was glowing with a blinding, neon-blue energy.
"TRIPLE COMBO: MIDORI-RAI-KANNON (Green Lightning Cannon)!"
The blast was catastrophic.
The glowing, electrified seaweed drill slammed into the Titanic Captains like the fist of a forest god. Vasco Shot's alcohol-soaked body acted as a perfect conductor; thousands of volts surged through his system, blasting him backward through three layers of stone wall. Van Augur tried to warp, but the vines moved faster than his "Warp" fruit could calculate, snagging his cape and dragging him into the centrifugal vortex. Catarina Devon's fox illusions shattered like glass.
The drill didn't stop at the pirates. It slammed into the massive, stationary hand of Sanjuan Wolf.
BOOM.
The impact was so great that the "Colossal Battleship" let out a roar that could be heard in the next kingdom. His arm was forcibly ejected from the building, and a massive, perfectly circular hole was bored through the fortress walls, revealing the cool moonlight of the northern docks.
The Great Escape
"CHOPPER, NOW! THE ROOF IS COMING DOWN!" Nami screamed.
Chopper let go of the support beams, shifting back into Brain Point with a poof of smoke just as the armory ceiling collapsed. Franky scooped up Chopper and Sara, while Usopp grabbed Misa.
"Wait for me! My gold!" David wailed, dragging his heavy sack through the smoke.
"Leave the gold or I leave you!" Nami threatened. David, suddenly possessed by the spirit of a world-class sprinter, found the strength to carry the sack and run faster than anyone thought possible.
They burst out onto the docks. Below them, bobbing in the dark water, was the Thousand Sunny. The ship was prepped for a "Coup de Burst," guarded by the remaining Straw Hats.
"WE MADE IT!" Usopp cheered, falling face-first onto the deck. "I defeated five thousand men single-handedly! I am the King of Hachinosu!"
"You were crying thirty seconds ago," Nami muttered, though she was smiling.
But as they looked back at the center of the island, the celebration died. The central plaza was a pillar of golden light and black wind. Dragon and Blackbeard were entering their final exchange, and the island was splitting down the middle.
The Shadow of the Buddha
While the Straw Hats secured their perimeter, a massive, golden light of a different nature began to approach the opposite shore.
Sengoku the Buddha stepped off his vessel and onto the cracked soil of Hachinosu. The earth groaned under his weight. Beside him, Koby followed, his eyes scanning the ruins with a desperate intensity. Sengoku didn't look at the fires; he didn't look at the retreating pirates. His gaze was fixed on the ground, searching for the one thing that mattered to him in this god-forsaken place.
"Garp..." Sengoku whispered, his voice like grinding stone.
He moved through the wreckage of the "Honesty Impact," seeing the remnants of the battle Koby had described. He reached the place where Garp had last been seen—the frozen spire of ice where Kuzan had supposedly finished him. But the ice was shattered. There was no body. Only a pool of blood and a discarded Marine cape.
Sengoku's fists clenched. The air around him began to hum with the golden vibration of his fruit. "Where is he, Kuzan?" he roared, his voice echoing across the island. "I know you're listening!"
From the shadows of a nearby ruin, a tall, slumped figure emerged. Kuzan stood there, his hands in his pockets, his breath coming in white plumes of frost. He didn't look like a pirate, and he didn't look like a Marine. He looked like a man who had finally finished a very long, very painful job.
He looked at Sengoku, the man who had once been his Fleet Admiral.
"Relax, old man," Kuzan said, his voice devoid of its usual lazy tone. "The 'Hero' is tougher than a bunch of rocks."
Koby stepped forward, his heart in his throat. "Admiral Kuzan! Is Garp-san... is he alive?"
Kuzan turned his gaze toward the massive flagship of the Revolutionary Army, the Wind Granma, which was hovering on the edge of the island's atmospheric storm.
"He's on Dragon's ship," Kuzan said, shifting his gaze to the horizon. "The Revolutionaries have a better doctor than the Blackbeard Pirates, surprisingly. Dragon... he wasn't going to let his father die in a place like this. Not while there's still a world left to change."
Sengoku looked up at the sky, at the swirling vortex of Dragon's Haki. A strange, bitter-sweet smile touched his lips. Garp was in the hands of his son. The Marines had lost their hero, but the family had reclaimed their own.
"I see," Sengoku muttered, relaxing his stance. "Then this island truly has no more business with the Navy."
As the island of Hachinosu began to break apart under the final, world-shattering clash between the Storm and the Darkness, the era of the Old Guard officially drew its final breath.
To be continued...